Tuesday, Dao Jones contacted me, & we ended up making arrangements to save this little guy. His name is Nesta.

I know, right? How can you resist that face? Dao is so totally the devil.

As anyone that’s met my Weimermonster can attest, I am not normally a little dog person — I’m not against them, there’s just a part of me afraid that I’ll step on them by accident, ya know? I mean for gods’ sake, I lose my friends that are lightweight rowers in the store because they’re too short — what if I roll over on it in my sleep? Zoey’s a good 55 lbs, man – much like a toddler, she can fend for herself & just kick me back. Little dogs can’t do that, what with the little & all.

Anyway, since he’d been in there for almost a month & his number would have been up on Friday, I agreed to go & spring Nesta from the clink, and we’d get someone to keep an eye on him over the weekend while I was in San Diego this weekend until the adoption event that DeMoriel is volunteering at on Sunday.

Now, there are certain places I just am not allowed to go — and animal shelters are on that list. Why? Because I just can’t handle it. I stand there and first, I get pissed off at every single person who hasn’t taken care of their animals so that the poor things ended up there. I really just don’t do well with the idea of neglected animals — I fully realize this is a leftover personal issue from Independent Middle Child Syndrome, but ya know what? Still there.

So there I am, all angry, and then they let me walk back into the kennels, which then I just want to cry, because every dog in the place comes running up to the door of their cage like, “pick me! pick me!” and I want to take them all home so they don’t have to stay there any more.

The poor little guy that I went in to get didn’t even bother with that — he’d been there so long that he just stayed curled in a little ball in the back of the pen while his two cellmates came running up. I pointed to the back and said to the guy, “I want that one.” The guy was like, “Do you want to play with any of the others?” And I was already about this><close to bursting into tears, ’cause there was a big red lab, and the boxer, and no! no no! Just the one! I need to leave now!

He started to take us out to the Getting to Know You Play Area thing, & I had to clarify that no, I’m just gonna take him, we’re good thanks. Dao asked me on the phone that night if they wanted references or anything for me to take him home, and was shocked to learn that they just processed the paperwork no questions asked. (Aw, Vermont kids are so cute!) I finally just said to her, “Look, I know this sounds bad, but the truth is that I’m a nice-looking white girl with English as a first language that just voluntarily walked into a shelter in South LA, took the scrawny little dog that was gonna get gassed in two days, and my debit card payment processed first try. As far as they’re concerned, I could have the dog. Hell, I could take five, they’d be cool with that.”

Poor little guy – he was so scared. They took him off for his state-mandated neutering, & I’ll leave to pick him up in about an hour or so then take him home so that he can chill out at my place & recover from captivity.

After months (okay years for some of you) of being told that I needed to take a few days off, I was actually going to finally do that this weekend and take a whole four days out of LA down in San Diego with no work or rowing events scheduled. Because of that, my next door neighbor H, who has a small dog about Nesta’s size had said that he could stay with them while I was gone, & she’d make arrangements with DeMoriel to get him to the adoption event Sunday.

I saw H this morning & mentioned that hey, I’m picking him up from being neutered today, etc & so forth, and suddenly she got all… squiggy about the whole thing. This morning it was fine. Then it was, “Oh, I might not be home Saturday night, can DeMoriel pick him up early?” and each time she would hit “Reply” to me instead of “Reply All” to include DeMoriel, which is LA Language for, “I’m trying to get out of this but I don’t want other people to know that.”

Then it finally went to “Well, I don’t know, what if something happens, or he doesn’t get along with my dog…”(note: Neither dog is over 10lbs, and I told her she could use the baby gate that I have in my house. If it can keep my dog in the apartment, I’m betting it can handle separating the two of them if Nesta rustles enough out of his post-op oogies to attempt to rumble. So basically I look at that excuse & think, “Really? Really seriously that’s your excuse?”)

Plus she was using chatspeak. When I got the sentence, I bet u havnt even thought about that…. the Old School Bronzer in me was d-u-n done. Don’t chatspeak me via email. Especially to question if I know about the proper precautions to take care of an animal. That’s it. Thank you for your time, however the position has been filled. You can go now.

I started to make arrangements to board him, & then just decided, ya know, it’s fine. I’m going to just take him with me to SD for Fri & Sat, since those are the only two days I have anything set up to do that I can’t shift off — I’m coaching the high school novvies for Hoff so she can go to NY this weekend, so I’ll leave the lil’ un with her roomies for the time that I’m at the boathouse. Normally I’d take him with me, but I don’t think it’s good for his stitches to be around all that sand right now.

But yah – it’s all I can do not to go back to this girl & say, “You know people like you are the reason this poor animal is in this situation, right?” Dude, it’s a dog. They’re living creatures. What the fuck, man? You backed out just because it might be a little bit hard? Because it won’t automatically be a cute addition to your overall visual for the weekend? Fuckin’ really?

One of the women at Beach!Boathouse, was talking about how people do this when they have kids — Helen called it Pet Monkey Syndrome, and it’s so true. “You want something that looks cute & won’t talk back? Get a pet monkey. Don’t have a kid.”

Unfortunately in LA, the pet monkeys tend to be dogs & cats, and that just annoys the living fuck out of me.

My dog is a little person. She has a very big soul, and her first owners eff’d her up quite a bit, as anyone who knew her when I first brought her home can tell you. When I first got her, she had separation issues for the first couple months, she was afraid of everything, and to this day Zoey runs like hell from a broom or hose and tends to be afraid of certain guys, which says a lot about the family I got her from. Basically, a dog is at best like a mute three year old kid – and you don’t f*ck with little kids.

So Zoey will go have a canine-cation with her boyfriend Argo as planned, and Nesta will come hang out with me this weekend until we take him to see if we can find a nice family to spoil him properly. As for me, well, I should have remembered a tenet of living in Los Angeles: Don’t rely on the tiny blond wanna-be actress. Especially when the conversation involves her confessing that she was kinda dating your landlord when he “helped her out” by giving her a lower rent, but now she doesn’t know if she actually wants to date him for real. Because yes, you’re That G$rl. But hey, we can do another post regarding my dim view of women who expect that men will solve all of their fiscal problems for them another day, ’cause this is one issue where I agree with Beyoncé – Independent Woman. Get a job, girl. Take care of yourself and you can be in a relationship because you want to be in that relationship, not just because you need a man to pay for you.

:blink:blink:

Oh, I’m sorry – where were we, and how did I get all the way up here on this soapbox? Hold on, give me half a second to climb back down…

Ah, right. Yes. Little dog to be picked up in about… an hour, shortened trip to San Diego & I’ll try for the original plan possibly at the end of Feb. Meanwhile this weekend? Well this weekend I may actually follow through on finishing up my tax prep, and fixing the office & art corner. If I’m going to be home, I might as well get things done so that I can try again at the end of the month with not even a smidge of guilt, dangit!

In the meantime, I shall repress the urge to smack others for being stupid. What? I can totally do it — shut it, I can!

Also, we’re gonna stop at Target or PetSmart on the way home — for the first time in my life, I have an animal that can be carried into the store, and hey – he needs a collar & a leash, doncha know. Something cute, but still dignified. No pink, no rhinestones, none of that. Poor little man just lost his literal balls, no need to take the metaphorical ones as well.

Wanna help the animals?The Gentle Barn needs you to like them on Facebook. If they can get 100k likes by March 1st, they have a donor willing to give them $1 for every like — that’s $100,000, which would help a lot of animals for quite some time. And it costs you nothing.